Devil May Cry

Toxygene

The screenshots just don't do the game justice

Devil May Cry is the latest game from Shinji Mikami, the designer
behind the Resident Evil and Dino Crisis series. Devil May Cry is
about as far from the horror survival genre as you can get though,
with the focus firmly on over-the-top madcap action rather than
shambling zombies.
You play Dante, the son of a devil knight and a mortal woman.
Setting the tone for the rest of the game, the opening cutscene
sees a beautiful blonde in a revealing leather corset come crashing
through your door on a motorcycle to impale you with a sword.
Apparently this is just her way of being friendly though, because
before you know it the pair of you are off to a mysterious castle
on a distant island where the devil prince Mundus is preparing to
invade the land of the living.
The result is twenty five missions chock full of carnage as you
guide Dante around the castle and the caves beneath it, with
occasional field trips to nearby sites such as a mausoleum and a
colosseum. Along the way you will be indulging in the wholesale
slaughter of some of the most bizarre looking creatures you will
find this side of American McGee's Alice. There are grim reaper
phantoms with lethal scythes, fast-moving lizardmen warriors that
burst out of the ground in a cloud of dust, cackling ghost witches
with what look like giant shears, and life-size marionettes which
drop down from their strings to attack you.

Sticky End

Cool!

The action is fast and furious almost from the outset, and in stark
contrast to the awkward controls and stilted movement of Resident
Evil's heroes and heroines, Dante leaps athletically around the
scenery, swinging his sword wildly and blazing away with his guns.
The controls are incredibly intuitive, and even the special moves
are fairly easy to pull off. Indeed, it could be argued that the
controls are a little too simple, because at times you get
so sucked into the game that it almost feels like it's playing
itself. Whatever you do with the analogue stick, as long as you
keep hammering the circle button Dante will perform an intricate
but lethal ballet, slicing up enemies, thrusting and slashing with
his sword, hurling bodies several feet into the air and splattering
blood everywhere.
The results are always spectacular, and the longer and more
involved your dance of death becomes, the more the game will reward
you for it. Simply slicing an enemy with a series of wild swings
will bring you a message of "Dull" at the top of the screen, but
this turns into "Cool" if you keep the blood flowing for long
enough or throw in a special move or two. Taking on a large number
of enemies simultaneously in an orgy of claret spraying action, you
can extend that to "Bravo" or "Awesome", eventually reaching the
lofty heights of "Stylish". It's not just an ego-massage either;
the higher the carnage rating of your kill, the more red orbs the
creature drops when it dies. And orbs mean prizes.

Majestic

One of the Alastor devil powers in action - funky!

Well, actually orbs mean power-ups. At the end of each mission you
are given the choice of spending some of your red orbs on buying
special items such as yellow orbs (which act as continues should
you get killed mid-mission), holy water (which damages any nearby
enemies when you use it) and blue orbs (which increase your maximum
health). All of these items can also be found hidden in dark
corners throughout the game if you hunt around a bit.
More importantly, red orbs can be spent on new special moves,
thanks to the game's devil trigger system. You start out with only
a big hulking family heirloom of a sword inherited from your
demonic father and your trusty pistols Ebony and Ivory, which are
guaranteed not to leave anybody living, in perfect harmony or
otherwise. But as you battle your way through the game you will
come across new weapons - the thunder sword Alastor and the flame
gauntlets Ifrit - which can unleash the devil within you.
Below your health bar you will see a series of runes lighting up as
you slash and swing with your chosen weapon. Arm yourself with with
Alastor or Ifrit, and once three or more of these runes are ignited
you can go into devil mode by pressing L1, giving you access to a
whole new set of insane special moves for as long as the runes stay
lit, or until you hit L1 again to return to human form. You can fly
through the air, turn your bullets into fireballs or electrical
bolts, create an inferno which spreads around Dante damaging
anything it touches, and generally create mayhem.

Spanish Castles In Space

Just one of the bosses you will meet

These special powers become particularly useful when you take on
the vast demon boss characters, which include a giant lava spider
and a skeletal eagle the size of a small jet liner. The game only
includes four real bosses, plus Mundus himself, and you will meet
each of them three times, but luckily most of them will behave
slightly differently each time you fight them, with new locations,
powers and strategies to overcome.
It's not all good news though. Battling the icky looking nightmare
boss does get rather repetitive, and the game in general tails off
a bit towards the end. Most of the monsters are introduced in the
first half of the game and just become more numerous and more
powerful later on, while less attention seems to have gone into the
dramatic camera angles in the closing stages of the game. Most of
the time these do an excellent job of showing off the spectacular
scenery around you without hampering the gameplay, but there are a
few points in the later missions where this doesn't work quite so
well.
This is really nitpicking though, and apart from a few brief lapses
Devil May Cry is an incredibly enjoyable and well-designed game. It
also sports some of the most impressive graphics I have ever seen
on any platform, with the real-time 3D world in which you are
fighting putting the pre-rendered backdrops of yore to shame. From
the curvaceous castle turrets and semi-organic cathedral to the
lush foliage of the overgrown gardens and decaying splendour of
royal bedrooms, the graphics are nothing short of spectacular. The
audio side of the game is also excellent, with decent voice acting,
solid sound effects and a soundtrack mixing classical-style
background music with pulsing industrial-strength Prodigy-style
techno for the battles. If this doesn't get your blood pumping,
you're probably already dead.

Conclusion

Devil May Cry is perhaps not the deepest of games, revolving as it
does around slaughtering demons and finding the appropriate
key-substitute to open the next door, but it's certainly one of the
most stylish and downright entertaining I've played in recent
months. It also has plenty of replay value, because although I
finished all twenty five missions in around six hours, each time
you complete the game you will unlock new modes with more powerful
and more numerous monsters, and additional special powers for both
Dante and his enemies. In fact, if anything the game was even more
fun the second time through than it was the first. What, are you
still here? Go out and buy this game now!